From Wikipedia:

Rafael Bienvenido Cruz (born March 22, 1939) is a Cuban-born American Christian preacher and public speaker. The father of US politician Ted Cruz, he is described by various media outlets including the Wall Street Journal as an acting surrogate in his son's political campaigns.

Early life

Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1939. His father, Rafael Cruz, was a salesman for RCA, originally from the Canary Islands, Spain. His mother, Laudelina Diaz, was a teacher.

Although his Cuban contemporary peers dispute his account of his history, Cruz states he joined the Cuban revolution at age 14 and "suffered beatings and imprisonment for protesting the oppressive regime" of dictator Fulgencio Batista. According to Cruz, as a teenager, he "didn't know Castro was a Communist". Cruz has stated in interviews that he fled Cuba at age 18 in 1957, after an attorney for the family bribed a Batista official to grant an exit permit. Cruz said he left with $100 sewn into his underwear before the Battle of Santa Clara, in which the revolution toppled Batista on January 1, 1959.

A Cuban émigré, he knew little or no English when he arrived in Austin,[9] to study at the University of Texas. During interviews and on the campaign trail, Cruz' son Ted recalls his father telling him he worked his way through college as a dishwasher, making 50 cents an hour. Cruz graduated from the university with a degree in mathematics. A few years later he became a staunch critic of Castro after "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent". Cruz recounts that his younger sister fought against the new regime in the counter-revolution and was consequently tortured. He remained regretful for his early support of Castro and expressed his remorse to his son on numerous occasions.

Religious and political beliefs

Cruz left the Roman Catholic Church in 1975 and became a born-again Christian after attending a Bible study with a colleague. Explaining his conversion, Cruz stated in an interview with The National Review, "The people at the Bible study had a peace that I could not understand, this peace in the midst of trouble. I knew I needed to find that peace by finding Jesus Christ." Following his conversion, his son and wife also became born-again Christians. In the Cruz home, talk at dinner time was frequently about the Bible.

Cruz works from his home in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, as a traveling preacher and public speaker, campaigning as a surrogate for his son during the 2016 Presidential campaign season. In a 2014 Associated Press story, Cruz was quoted as saying, "I have a burden for this country and I feel that we cannot sit silent." He went on to say that he feels "It's time we stop being politically correct and start being biblically correct."

About his political involvements in the 1980s, Cruz reflected, "I was on the state board of the Religious Roundtable, a Christian and Jewish religious organization that worked to elect Ronald Reagan." At the time, he told his son, "God has destined you for greatness."

At the New Beginnings Church in Irving, Texas, in August 2012, Cruz delivered a sermon where he described his son's senatorial campaign as taking place within a context where Christian "kings" were anointed to preside over an "end-time transfer of wealth" from wicked people to the righteous. Cruz urged the congregation to "tithe mightily" to achieve that result.[24] During an interview conducted by the Christian Post in 2014, Cruz stated, "I think we cannot separate politics and religion; they are interrelated. They've always been interrelated." Salon described Cruz as a "Dominionist, devoted to a movement that finds in Genesis a mandate that 'men of faith' seize control of public institutions and govern by biblical principle."

Personal life

In 1959, Cruz married Julia Ann Garza (1939-2013), but divorced after a few years. She later became a professor at California State University, Stanislaus. They had two daughters, Miriam Ceferina Cruz (11/22/61-2011) and Roxana Lourdes Cruz (b. 1962), a Greenville, Texas, physician. He has one grandson.

In his twenties, Cruz moved to New Orleans. In 1969, at his new oil company job, he met his second wife, Eleanor Elizabeth Darragh Wilson, a computer programmer from Delaware. Cruz and Wilson lived in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where their only child, Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz, was born. While in Calgary, the couple owned a seismic-data processing firm for oil drillers.

After Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, he was granted political asylum in the United States following the expiration of his student visa.[1] He became a Canadian citizen during his residence in Canada, returning to the United States with his family in the mid-'70s. He renounced his Canadian citizenship and in 2005 became a naturalized U.S. citizen.